Baby Butt Balm

We've gone thru many, many tubes of Desitin in this house since having children. For some reason my kids seem to be prone to diaper rash...not that they have them constantly or anything, but we've dealt with our fair share. I've tried a few other kinds of diaper rash creams, but Desitin has been the only thing that really worked for us. However, I really do NOT like Desitin. I mean, it works well, but it's white. And it stains anything and everything it touches. We have so many white smudges on our bedspread...and that stuff gets under your fingernails and won't come out....sigh. When I came across this recipe for a diy "baby butt balm" I decided to give it a try and see if it would work. I don't cloth diaper, but this recipe is safe to use with cloth diapers. 

I slightly altered the original recipe because I wanted something a little less greasy, and then halved it. Here's my recipe:

1/2 cup coconut oil

3/4 ounce beeswax

10 drops lavender essential oil

10 drops tea tree oil (melaleuca) essential oil

Weigh your beeswax. I cut small chunks off my bar of beeswax, and then once it was weighed I crumbled it into smaller pieces so it would melt faster. You can also use beeswax pellets/pastilles or grate a bar.

I discovered that small canning jars make excellent double boilers. :) Dump in your wax and coconut oil. 

To melt, boil water in a small pan and set the jar into the water. Stir frequently. 

Since coconut oil melts at 76 degrees and beeswax melts at 140 degrees, it will take awhile to melt the beeswax once the coconut oil melts. Just keep stirring. :)

Slowly...

....the wax will all melt. :)

Once it's all liquified, remove from the boiling water and add the essential oils. Stir well.

I let mine set up in the jar, but next time I think I'll pour it into the final container while it's still liquid. 

Stir once in awhile while it cools. It has such a nice, smooth, glossy texture. :)

I was going to keep it in the jar, but when I found this empty squeeze container at Walmart I thought this would be much more convenient. 

It has a great texture...firm enough to handle, but it melts into a nice, clear, oily/waxy coating on the skin. I've been using it for some minor redness but until last night I hadn't tried it out on a real diaper rash. Last night we had a nasty one, so I put the balm on thick and the rash was almost completely gone this morning! Keep using at every diaper change while there's any remaining redness. I love this balm...it's cheap, it's natural, it's non-toxic, and it smells good. :) You can also use this for cuts, scrapes, burns, or just dry skin! 

Here's a breakdown of why these ingredients were used, borrowed from SimplyRealMoms.com:

Coconut Oil: Antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial/infection fighting, antioxidant, has no harmful or discomforting side effects and is non-toxic to humans and animals. It is soothing and nourishing to an angry baby butt and is safe for cloth diapers.

Beeswax: Used to thicken the salve and form a nice breathable barrier on baby’s bottom. Excellent emollient and support for moisture. It protects skin from damaging environmental factors and is anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anti-allergenic, germicidal and has antioxidants.

Tea Tree Oil/Melaleuca: Used for it's analgesic, antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-infections, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiseptic, and tissue regeneration properties.  It will soothe skin and promote healing as well as killing any bacterial, viral, fungal or yeast infection in the area.

Lavender Oil: Lavender has many benefits, some of which are: analgesic (reduces pain), anti-fungal, antihistamine, anti-infectious, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiseptic, regenerative and sedative oil. It fights any infection in the diaper area and soothes damaged, sore, red and angry skin. It also encourages cellular regeneration and healing. The scent is calming to you and your child helping release emotional and physical tension associated with the rash.

Tinted Lip Balm

I was soooo excited when my lip balm tubes came in the mail today!! I have a bunch of ideas I've been wanting to try for lip balm, but the first one I wanted to try was a light pink tinted balm. I'm not a real lipstick girl...I like eye makeup, but I don't like a lot of stuff on my mouth. It gets dry and sticky and then my lips feel all peely...ick! I do like a little pink tho, and my lips are always dry, so a pretty pink tinted lip balm was high on my list of DIY projects. :) I mostly followed this recipe, but halved it. 

You will need:

1 tablespoon grated beeswax

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1 teaspoon sweet almond oil 

(I think you could substitute vitamin E oil if you don't have sweet almond)

5 drops of peppermint essential oil or any other oil you really love 

(peppermint has a cooling effect)

If you want, you could stop right there and have a nice lip balm. If you want to go for tinted, there are a lot of natural lipsticks, eyeshadows, or colors you could use, but I opted to just go with an old, regular, store-bought lipstick I found in the back of a drawer, and a white cream eye shadow for shimmer. It wasn't really the color I wanted (I wanted more of a bright pink) but I figured it would work for an experimental batch. :) 

Anyway, you will need:

1 small chunk (maybe about 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon) of lipstick (pick a much darker or brighter shade than what you want your lip balm to be, since it will be lightened by the other ingredients)

1/4 teaspoon shimmery cream or powder eye shadow

Containers for your lip balm (I used tubes I bought on eBay for about $0.21 shipped)

Dropper to fill the tubes

Put all your ingredients except the essential oil into a small, glass jar. 

Use a small sauce pan with a couple inches of water as a double boiler (boil the water in the saucepan, and set the glass jar into the water). I used a wooden skewer to stir, since I could just throw it away. This stuff is hard to clean off of things once it hardens. 

Keep stirring until all the ingredients have melted into a smooth liquid. It was sooooo shimmery and pretty! :)

Add your essential oil and stir well. I wish you could see all the sparkle and dimension...the picture doesn't do it justice. 

Quickly (this stuff hardens pretty rapidly) fill your tubes or whatever containers you want to use with the dropper. 

This recipe filled 5.75 lip balm tubes (.15 oz). It hardens so quickly that by the time I got to the sixth tube (far left) it had already gotten kinda goopey and didn't fill as nicely...that one got to be my tester. :)

Cap and let sit until cooled. 

I really liked this lip balm...it felt good, smelled good, looked good....yay! :) I'm really excited to try some other variations in the very near future. ;)

Body Wash / Liquid Hand Soap

I like pretty-smelling body wash, but I hate paying $6 a bottle just to smell good. : \ So when I found this blog post via Pinterest, I decided to give homemade body wash a try. This can also be used as liquid hand soap).

You only need two ingredients (Well, and water. But who counts water??). A bar of soap (I used 97 cent bar of Yardley Oatmeal & Almond from Walmart - which smells HEAVENLY, by the way - and it worked well!), and glycerin. Glycerin can usually be found with skincare in health food stores, near bandaids in drugstores, or where I found mine, Amazon.com. :)

For this recipe I used a 4oz bar of soap, so make sure to check the weight of yours. If you have an 8oz bar, double the recipe. I've heard rumors that Dove bar soaps do not work with this recipe (they won't gel), so I would avoid using those. :)

First, grate the bar of soap. I'm starting to think (after all the grating I've been doing lately!) that a small food processor may be in order. :)

Be careful that you grate ONLY the soap. Don't grate your fingers, or finger nails. That would be a dumb idea.

Once the soap is all nicely grated, put it in a good sized pot and add 8 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of glycerin.

Heat over a medium-low heat, stirring often, until all the soap is dissolved. Do not allow the water to boil as your soap may crystallize. Remove from heat and let it sit undisturbed for 10 - 12 hours. I just covered my pot and went to bed. :)

This is what I found in the morning! :)

Using a whisk or a hand mixer, whip up the soap. If you want you can add some extra water for a smoother consistency...I would do this especially if you plan to put it in a pump bottle to use as hand soap. I will warn you...this soap doesn't really lather, and it has a kind of slimy consistency. It was weird to me at first, but now I don't really notice it. :) I still come out clean, so I guess it's a success. 

And voila! Around $1 for half a gallon of body wash! :) Yay for savings!! 

Soap Scum Buster

I didn't take any pics of the ingredients, but this one is very simple. Our bathtub drain had been plugged up for awhile (I refuse to believe that long hair may have been the cause of this clog!!) so every time we used the shower the water was several inches deep by the time we were done...this made for a nasty soap scum ring around the bathtub as the water slowly, slowly receded. I finally got some drain cleaner and burned out the not-hair that was causing the slow drainage. Soon the water was swirling quickly down the drain, just as water should. However, once I got done being proud of myself for "fixing" this problem, I looked around at the soap scum coated bathtub....ICK!!!! I've tried scrubbing soap scum before, and even with cleaners it's not an easy job. So I quickly googled "homemade soap scum cleaner" and came up with several results...they all basically boiled down to this: 1 part of hot vinegar to 1 part of Dawn dish soap. Ok, I can handle that. I guess the key to this working is for the vinegar to go on hot. I microwaved half a cup of white vinegar for a minute or two, dumped it in an empty spray bottle, added half a cup of Dawn, shook it gently, and went to work. I thoroughly sprayed every inch of that icky bathtub. Most of the recipes I read said it needed to sit for several hours, so I went to finish some other cleaning projects. I came back after an hour or two, and decided to give it a go. I grabbed a clean rag, got it wet, and started scrubbing...well, wiping, really, since the scum all came right off!! It was so sweet!! I had to use Comet cleaner on a few spots to remove some navy blue paint scum (I made the bad decision to rinse out my paint brushes in the bathtub after using navy blue paint.....), but other than that I just used this cleaner on the soap scum ring and it came out beautifully clean!! Here are some before and after pics to prove it. :)

Exhibit A: Icky Soap Scum Ring - EEEWWWWW!!

Exhibit B: Squeaky Clean and Shiny Shower - AAAAAHHHHH. :)

I didn't get a before pic of this end of the tub, but believe me, it was every bit as bad or WORSE than the above pic. Now it's so clean!! Yay!! 

Now, go bust some scum!! :)